Thursday, September 20, 2007

Getting The Funk Out

I'm in a blogging funk.

I keep posting because I need to keep writing, keep talking, but I'm finding it difficult. And I'm finding it even more difficult to venture beyond the confines of my virtual quarters and be neighbourly and friendly and chatty. I wander out into the neighbourhood and hear the chatter and the camaraderie and the friendly debate and am torn between wanting to jump in and wanting to run inside and draw the curtains. I run inside and draw the curtains. I haven't the energy to chat or discuss or pat shoulders. I run back inside and draw curtains and feel guilty.

It's not like there's anything seriously wrong. I've had the flu, sure, and that gets one down. But I've not been facing any real trials, any life-changing challenges. My challenges and trials have been more or less mundane. The thing of it is, I can't write about them.

That conflict with my mom - that I have not been able to write about - was never fully addressed. We called a truce, because my sister is struggling with some terrible challenges - a heartbreaking struggle that I cannot write about - but it remains only a truce. My husband and I are trying to make a decision about a big change in our lives, but we are at loggerheads about how to proceed - and I cannot write about it. Our struggle to negotiate our disagreements on this issue (that I cannot write about) is frustrating me, and I cannot write about that frustration. (Why do we not know how to disagree? Why do we not know how to fight? Does anyone know?)

Blah, blah, blah.

I cannot write about those things, so I write about other things. Britney, physics, the potty (which, for the record, has seen no more action. Wonderbaby insists upon visiting it and sitting on it, bare-assed, with sunglasses, but has not repeated the tinkle of the other day); a review here and there, a lot of mindlessgossip - these are easy things to write about. But those posts are just me, talking to myself, chattering away so that I won't feel the weight of heavier things bearing upon my heart. And I can only sustain that chatter on my own, alone, here in my corner. I can't bring it out into the community, because I simply can't just chatter in this community. You all make me talk. Which is good, but. Right now, I don't want to talk.

Does that make sense?

Anyway.

There are a couple of things that I can't and don't want to avoid talking about right now. Breastfeeding, for one. I haven't weighed in on the discussions about Facebook and Bill Maher because - in addition to everything I've said above - the whole thing just makes me mad. There's nothing to argue about. Breastfeeding is natural. Boobs aren't dirty. Anyone who thinks otherwise should be shunned. It's like arguing over whether the Taliban maybe had a point about oppressing women - it's stupid and backward and I thought that we were, as a culture, better than that, or at least, getting better. I was wrong.

So I haven't wanted to discuss it. All I want to say is this: fuck you, Facebook. You too, Bill Maher.

Thesefriends - among many others that I cannot list here, not least because I haven't read them all yet, for reasons noted above - are discussing it more civilly. This friend went so far as to chat with a representative of Facebook. (Facebook, not surprisingly, doesn't really have a satisfactory response. But at least he tried, and was civil. I would have just yelled at them.)

I get it, HBM, re: the whole 'how do we not know how to fight'. I've got some, cough, issues myself I would like to broach with the hubby, but the last argument was pretty bad. Seems like sometimes (maybe when the stakes aren't high) you find just the right words and time and tone and everything is worked out very well in the end. Then, there are the times like lately, where every little tiff seems to have disastrous potential. And, even if you can disagree in a civil manner, who takes the short end when you finally make the decision?

I've just decided that I'm too resentful of everyone and everything lately, and am trying to take a big step back from caring much about anything until I can get some perspective...... which is a luxury I am afforded, because my husband spends every other week in the wilderness.

Aw Catherine, I hear you. Boy do I hear you. I'm considering taking a hiatus from the blogging world. It is becoming to bothersome and almost painful to sit at my computer and try to remember the funny in my life.

All I want to do is yak about my Bug, my pain, my kids' pain. When I'm done with that topic I want to write about how my parents have still decided they don't want me and have banished me and my children to the nether recesses of their minds.

Painful stuff.

But the ability of not being able to spew it out onto my blog is hindering me.

I'll just stare at Wonderbaby instead. She's cute. That goes a long way.

Writer's block comes and goes and sometimes I feel more private and not much like blogging at all. Don't worry about it - I hope all of the things in your life work out and that you can get back to wholehearted blogging again.

Hang in there. There's a lot to share with the bloggy world, but a lot that can't be, and it's difficult to not feel like you're half present when flesh and blood life has complications. Much love to you and your family, even the ones who are being disagreeable.

there's something awful about having all the real meaty stuff happening in circles you can't write about because they're too personal, too exposed - i'm sorry for that, because we both know that it's the messy stuff that often most needs to be written.

and y'know, i don't know if anyone does fight well. i used to think my ex-husband and i did...then i noticed we were actually just dripping with contempt behind veneers of pleasantry. so much as i hate the pain of a real fight, i'll take it. because there's something to come back from then.

i hope Tanner's walk goes well. i hope the rest begins to find resolution. i hope the potty gets more use.

Thank you, HBM for referring to all that which can only remain subterfuge.

There's so much that exists beyond the word, written or verbal.

My husband, before we knew each other in any substantial way, made reference to this family, a mother, father, older son, younger daughter. I remember: "I've got friends, and they have everything I'd want in family life."

I thought: "How wonderful. How absolutely inspiring."

I wanted him for wanting that.

And then I met them.

And what followed unhinged every feeling about family and loss and pain, about memory, and the vortex of envy and jealously and lost potential, about life itself.

Because, when the father wrapped his arms around the son, listened to his to every word as though the gospel's apochryphal text, I saw another boy, many years before, belittled, and silenced and humiliated. I saw broken dishes and a ravaged life.

Because, when the daughter walked alongside her mom, arms etwined, calm advice given, laughter shared, a room, pink and newly decorated, I saw another daughter, years before, vying for attention and space, some tiny corner of the blanket shared between three beds: Her sister's, and her gramdmother's, and in the middle, cold and dusty, her own.

Though I'm certain that nobody is putting their whole life out there on their blog, it's frustrating when you have this platform and can't use it.

I find the writing therapeutic; it helps to galvanize my thoughts, and sort out where I stand. Right now, there is something that I want so badly to write about, but I just can't. Not yet, maybe not ever. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I can read others' blogs to distract me. And look at pictures of their boobs. :) (Amanda at The Wink posted her breastfeeding picture this week too. Take that, Facebook!)

Writing, funks, family, fog... weight, figurative and literal it's tough, really fucking tough. I enjoy it even when you are just sort of clearing your head through the screen. I hope even just a little of the hope I am sending you makes its way through your screen.

Regarding how we know how to disagree, and how we know how to fight,I know. My husband and I end up fighting about how we fight. And the thing is, neither of us want to fight, or like fighting, as some couples do. Instead of clearing the air, for us it leaves us both frustrated and confused. It is the source of my current funk.

The funk must be viral. We've come down with it around these parts, too.

My best to you.

Question for you...when you were in labor did your Doc ever tell you to NOT push? I had to NOT push for almost 15 minutes while the nurses fetched my Doc. It was worse than pushing. So unnatural.

The NOT talking about things that are profoundly important in our lives, is perhaps similar. Silence can feel so unnatural, especially when we would much rather shout from the rooftops...or just simply, even softly, process the details of our life.

I don't know you well, but you could have been reading my mind. I'm in a total blogging funk, that I just stopped writing for the time being. It has been an energy and time-suck for me lately, so I had to take drastic action! Here's hoping it gets better soon for both of us!

it's hard to write when what you really NEED to write about is anathema. Same with talking for me. If there's an 'off limits' topic I have a hard time communicating at all because all I want/need to talk about is not allowed. Major button for my from my childhood/family.

In the end all I can do is journal, the old fashioned way. I have lots of journals, poems, etc. from the years, but the funny thing is they're mostly from the really crappy times, the times I NEEDED to let those frustrations and feelings out somehow and since I couldn't talk about it with the folks who needed to hear it, I wrote it.

Here's hoping you can get it out somehow.

Oh, and I'm sooo ok with just having photos of WB to look at you know. ;)

Ooh, Bossy is right on that one. Pain brings transformation, to be sure. Not causes it, but through the experience of pain we transform. I'm not here to plug myself, but my latest post at springinglight.com talks about this.

For me, it's writing about them that brings clarity to things, especially the painful ones. The fact that you can't write about this thing and this other thing must be horribly stifling. I hope you have some other outlets, and I hope more still that the clarity and resolution you seek is at hand.

And bravo - - Facebook and Bill Maher need a good swift kick in the pants, and thensome.

I hope this doesn't make me the yucky-comment-person, but here's one thing to ponder: you said that despite Facebook and Bill and the "many, many other tards out there..." and I have to mention it. The word "tard" is really hard for me to hear, personal reasons. Maybe a better word for those two? That said, I love youloveyouloveyou, and love your glorious blog.

After this 4th child, my brains are literally fried and I have no energy to write anything. Napping takes priority my friend when you're up in the middle of the night nursing your child.

And I've commented over at Mrs. Chicky about a post she wrote about Bill Maher, I don't understand why the big hoopla about nursing. Coming from Viet Nam where the only source of nutrients you'll get as a babe is from your mom's breast, it's survival. These men are such backward!!